ERP011 - Drones w/ Alex Dow

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Today I'm chatting with Alex Dow. Alex is a cyber security expert professionally, but he has a deep passion for drone technology. His passion led him through a hobby interest in flying drones to building and even racing drones. He now helps organize a regional drone racing league in Vancouver. In the conversation, we chat about the growing sport of drone racing, some of the safety concerns around drones, the development of flying AI and a few of the numerous commercial applications for drone tech. Lots of people are familiar with drone tech, but few appreciate how dramatically this tech will weave its way into our daily lives. Also, if you enjoy the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps others discover the podcast. And now let's turn to my conversation with Alex. And we have Alex with us today. Welcome Alex. Thank you, Todd. Excellent. All right, so we're going to talk today about drones. And this is definitely an evolving space that is going to get a lot of commercial attention probably in the next next five years. And there's a significant growth in the consumer space as well. Uh my first intro to kind of the how wild this technology would really get was uh friend sent me a YouTube video of a bunch of quadcopters cooperating to lift things and catch things and all of this was was done in some autonomous fashion. And it was it really kind of captured my imagination on, you know, how this technology could be applied going forward. And uh since then I've I've always tried to keep a a tab on what's going on in the in the drone space. And uh wanted to bring you on, chat a bit about the the larger industry and uh more specifically on the drone racing uh when we we chatted a little while back. You uh mentioned that you were involved in in a drone racing uh league. And this is something that I thought was really, really cool because it immediately reminded me of the old days of flight. Back in, I don't know, it was probably the the 20s and 30s where, you know, people would go out to fields. And they'd they'd have these uh these uh prop planes racing around uh a field around a certain set of targets. Uh and this is kind of exactly what I imagined when uh you were describing the the drone racing space. So, really excited about the conversation. And uh appreciate your time you've taken the time to come on. I appreciate you having me, Todd. And uh again, droning is a a passion hobby of mine. Uh but mostly from a recreational space, but it is really moving forward exponentially in the industrial and commercial space. So, let's start, I guess, touching on the the drone racing league. Uh since this is kind of uh where we started talking about this and I think maybe it makes sense to start from the consumer space. And then uh uh expand upon the the commercial as well. So, if you want, uh give us a a sense of the drone racing league as as kind of that that hobby. Or uh competitive sport exists uh in in kind of the world and North America and then as well the the league that you guys are running in in the lower mainland in Vancouver here. Yeah, absolutely. I think the best way to start off is to say, well, where did it come from? And, you know, remote control planes and helicopters have been around for decades. However, only recently has the technology advanced to the point where a multi-rotor platform can actually work. And what I mean by that is, uh before that, we didn't really have microprocessors small enough and fast enough to be able to make the decisions of which motor to spin up faster or slower. And that's imperative to keeping a multi-rotor uh aircraft in the air and flying aggressively. Um, I personally started flying these multi-rotors uh in 2012. Uh building my own, you know, learning how to solder, learning a lot more about electronics, uh and putting it together. And for the most part, I hovered it, I flew it line of sight around fields and and things of that nature. Uh but I was really eager to uh do more with what they call FPV or first-person view. And what that is is actually attaching a camera and a video transmitter on the platform, the the drone, and flying it uh as if you were in the drone. And you can either do so with video goggles, which you wear and they receive the video signal. Uh or uh a lot of people will build up ground stations, which will be uh a fairly large uh uh LCD monitor that'll receive the video and give you uh a view. Uh so I started doing that around 2013, 2014. Uh and you know, it was great, you know, being able to fly in a helicopter essentially, uh where I typically wouldn't be able to do so. With without, you know, uh hours and hours of training. And also access to a real uh uh helicopter or plane. So, maybe I want to pause here for a second. Because I I don't think a lot of people really uh understand the technology that this is first person. That you strap on some goggles and you're flying the drone. I think a lot of people think of this as as the line of sight, standing back at the back of a field and more the traditional um uh radio controlled uh style of control for the the device. Uh my question would be, isn't it disorienting? Flying first person like at the speeds and and the the video feedback, like I I my thought in this would be when you try flying it, you'd fall over because you feel like you're whipping around corners and zipping past trees. Is it is it not disorienting to fly first person in this thing? You definitely want to sit down for your first couple uh laps for sure. Um, you will, if you've ever gone to a field where people are flying first person, you will notice that um their people either standing or sitting, their heads will start wandering. Because they're one of their senses for balance is now totally miscommunicating where they are uh to their brain. Uh I personally have a upper left lean, uh but other people look down, other people look hard right. Uh it is it is an interesting phenomenon. Does it cause any nausea? Um, I would imagine it does, uh you know, I've I've given people uh uh what we call co-pilot seats. And because uh we're transmitting over analog video signal, anyone can tune into these channels. So if you have an extra pair of goggles, you pass it on and somebody can essentially hitch a ride. Um and some people said, wow, that is uh intense and that is uh disorienting. Um, I think it's a lot to do with like getting used to that view. Uh as well as uh, you know, when you're controlling the drone, like you, you know, your hand moves the uh the stick, so you're rolling and your eye sees that. So, you know, I believe that's what prevents me from feeling nauseous, but somebody that's not in control and just hitching a ride, I could see that uh causing causing some disorientation. I see. Um, as well to note that uh the the first generation of these goggles. And and the ones I still use, uh are not as immersive as some of the virtual reality goggles. Uh these goggles, I would say, uh the most common brand is Fat Shark. Um, I would say it it simulates sitting at the back of a theater. So you can see the screen, but there's a lot of black border around. And as much as you would think that that's actually a disadvantage, I've flown with the fully immersed goggles with a much larger field of view. And that actually for me makes me feel a lot more disoriented. And the reason for that is is that we have very good focus right in front of us. However, our peripheral view is is is fairly low quality. So, if you're feeding yourself more information that now you have to be looking around in this goggle for, you know, where my battery levels are at. Um if you're using GPS, where home is at and all the different uh telemetry data you can have within the goggle. It is actually a lot more exhausting looking around this, you know, virtually large space rather than um the traditional model. So, I've been sticking with the old school method, which is a much smaller view um right ahead of me rather than the full immersion. Right. Cool. And so you're you guys are organizing races uh both indoor and occasionally outdoor. I guess the outdoor would be subject to uh a lot of uh environmental conditions as well. Is there um sort of different equipment or different leagues for the indoor versus the outdoor racing? Uh yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I started uh organizing the the indoor racing last uh September. And really it's because I bought a drone. A racing drone and it was sort of a struggle to find places to fly. When it was dry and with our, you know, common winter weather of wet and dark. Um, it seemed like there wasn't going to be a a lot of great opportunities to fly, so I I started uh organizing indoor racing at an indoor soccer field. Um and we have about 20 to 30 pilots that typically come out to fly with us. There are a lot more people out there. Um and to your question about like special equipment, the indoor space. We, you know, we have a 14,000 square foot uh soccer field. And that still feels small, uh and a lot of people may not want to fly indoors. Because it's it feels so small and your reaction time, like you're making direction changes, sometimes 180 degree direction changes. Every one and a half seconds, so it does take a a very skilled pilot to be able to fly in the courses. And that I I think is a a limiting factor to indoor racing versus outdoor racing. It's a lot more open space, uh and there's a lot more uh uh area for uh to correct any bad uh bad mistakes of in flying. So the I guess the course layout, uh you know, as people would look at this. I imagine it's there's probably simple courses where you're just kind of zipping in circles and and trying to maintain speed. And, you know, proper line for for getting around similar to kind of a NASCAR race, I guess, but then there would also, you know, be some of the videos I've seen. Where there's obstacles, you have to throw it fly through certain rings in certain order and different heights and stuff like that. Uh can you maybe describe some of the the different course patterns and and what that looks like? Um, one of the uh the I I guess the master league that uh my my uh league is part of, called Multi GP. Is actually built a standardized course uh that anyone can set up. And it allows us to have a standardized time trial. So, um, you know, our our competitive racers can compete against other people on the internet of how fast they are able to go through the course. Um, the course that we've organized uh in the indoor racing is is looks like um sort of like a U. And it's to maximize the hairpin turns. Uh these uh drones are highly agile, they're very fast, but they're even more agile. So they can uh almost turn on a dime. Uh so we have essentially uh called it uh a big U. And it is a a a bubble shape view that you can uh they'll have three three hairpin turns and uh one big arc turn. Um it fits the most course in the small 14,000 square foot space that we use. Um, we also have created gates, now a lot of manufacturers are coming out with really cool gates. We've been uh building this from the ground up using uh PVC piping and pool noodles for the most part. And uh some of our uh other pilots who are have, you know, their day job is electrical engineering have actually built a timing gate system. Based off of uh uh Arduino and a Raspberry Pi using uh infrared transponders. To allow us to time ourselves within these tracks. You mentioned kind of the the the league structure and and fitting in with a sort of a a larger group. Uh as far as the league goes. What does that kind of league structure look like? Is there like international competitions that you would be able to, you know, do time trials and qualify to get invited to group from around the world? Is that is that how the the the league structure would work? Yeah. Uh and, you know, this is a uh this sport is in its infancy. Um but there's essentially three leagues. There's uh Multi GP, which my group is a part of. And that is much more um any any any town can set up their own league and and uh compete with other leagues. And there is um a Pacific Northwest um qualifier happening in Oregon in August, I believe. And we can actually send our racers to that to that competition. They they run a web app that allows us to track who's part of our league, races, uh standings and things of that nature. I would say that's the largest distribution of smaller smaller leagues. Now, this one I would say is much more not really uh focused on profit. As much as just enabling the sport, much more focused on the recreational side. Then there's two other leagues and these are the for-profit larger organizations. So there's IDRA, International Drone Racing Association. Uh they just struck a I think a multi-year deal with ESPN to actually uh televise these races. They had their first large drone race uh last summer in Sacramento, California in a in a football stadium. And since then they've hosted the Dubai event, which was a million dollar event. And you know, broke broke the internet essentially. Um, Million dollars like the the prize money? Yeah, prize money was a million dollars total. Wow, that's pretty big for for something that pretty infantile sport at this point. Like it's it's really, you know, a lot of not a lot of people know about this even in the tech industry. So, that's pretty awesome. Absolutely. Um, it it I I it was funded by a a prince from Dubai, uh I think that's where a lot of the money came from. Uh again, it was run exceptionally well, uh considering that there are a lot of technical challenges with organizing these events. Um, but the actual winner was a I think a 13-year-old kid from the UK, he won a quarter million dollars. And now he's now he's become a a young rock star in the drone racing community. And is now going to all these other events. There's another league. Uh DRL, Drone Racing League. Uh this has heavy investment uh from the owner of the Miami Dolphins. And their angle is that they invite the best of the best pilots, film in really awesome locations. They did uh a football stadium, they've done an abandoned mall and they just did uh the uh the floodways in in Los Angeles. Where, you know, countless movies have been filmed. They've actually, you know, closed that off and set up a a a race there. Uh which is yet to be televised, but they do no public viewing, they do private races. And then they've set up cameras every which way to do a bunch of post-production and then show off the racing. And what's interesting about DRL is that they actually standardize on one racing platform to maximize the post-production video value. Whereas uh IDRA is you bring your own uh drone to the race, you know, you qualify into a certain class and you race. But you get to build it yourself, you get to tune it yourself, whereas DRL, it's one standard build and then they bring the uh the professional pilots in to race. So that's that's an interesting qualifier as well. Because like when we're talking about these drones and and the racing that that you guys are doing. This is far and away from what people would typically see, you know, on on the shelf at at a, you know, a hobby shop or a toy store. You maybe describe some of not not necessarily the deep technical differences, but, you know, the racing drones and why they're different than what would typically be available to a consumer off the shelf. Well, I guess it's the same same sort of thing where you can buy a very sexy race car at the dealership. But really that car is not the same that's on the race track, uh and the reason for that is is that the people that are racing. Really want to push the edge of performance and find find those limits and and blow past them. I would say that there are quite a few almost ready to fly racing drones that are are out there. I had purchased one. Uh I have moved back to the DIY build your own, uh mainly because they don't they they sort of have limitations. Where if you're building it yourself, it's like Legos. If that part doesn't work, just take it off and put on a new compatible part. Um some a lot of the pre-built ones are very limited to using that manufacturer's parts. Uh which can get very expensive uh if if and when you're learning. You're going to be crashing them and breaking them. One of the other aspects of this, I think, um, you know, shifting a bit towards the more the commercial application. But still certainly in the mind of the consumer, there's a lot of talk about the safety concerns. Around drones and sort of the use of drones. Um I know the a lot of the federal governments, the US FAA and the Canadian uh regulatory body is looking for uh some restrictions or or uh um agreements around how and where drones are utilized. And this is something that I see a lot about, you know, that we've we've had a a pretty nasty fire season. Uh for the last year in Canada and, you know, I've I've seen advertisements around no drone use. Around forest fires and there's pretty uh stiff fines around that. It doesn't seem like a month goes by where there isn't some article about a near miss. Whether it happened or not is questionable, but a near miss with drones and airplanes. Is this something that gets talked about in the community? And how that that's to be addressed in some fashion? Uh, we're very frustrated as legitimate users and pilots uh of these drones. We really care about keeping the recreational sport free and available to uh both existing pilots and new pilots. And unfortunately, most specifically with the the DJI Phantom product line, anyone with a thousand dollars can now buy a drone. That takes almost all the skill and and required cognitive ability to fly out of the equation. And that's why you see and hear about drones being used inappropriately. Forest fires, flying near buildings, flying over people, it's always the that one model. Um that is being sold at Best Buy. Um, and it frustrates us and and and mainly because it's it's generalizing and demonizing the use of these drones. The racing drones, yes, have cameras. However, I can assure you your iPhone 3G has a better camera than our drones do. Because we don't require the high definition video, we just need a video that can see where we're going. It's not used for video capture, it's not used to take pictures. It's far too low quality. But as soon as somebody asks, is there a camera on that, then a lot of people get their nose bent out of shape because they believe their privacy is being invaded. Uh and it's very frustrating. From the misuse uh of these drones, again, forest fires. Like, you know, unfortunately, it's happening too frequently that we're hearing about people using these drones inappropriately. Near airports, forest fires, helipads. And it's really frustrating because it only is going to bring in more draconian laws that will prevent just the recreational users. From having fun and learn, you know, for me, it's been a great learning experience. I took electrical engineering in school about a decade ago and I thought, I would never use this ever. And now I'm like, oh, that's what that means and now I can fix this problem because I understand it from training I took a decade ago. So yeah, it is very frustrating. Some of the things that I've seen, uh people have suggested that there's a necessity for kill switches in drones. So that, you know, within a certain radius, basically you you send a a kill signal and drop them out of the sky. So that, you know, emergency services has the ability to to down drones in an area. Which, you know, seems a little aggressive. Some of the the other ones, um just simply people pulling out a shotgun. Blasting it out of the sky, probably happens a little more in the states than it does anywhere else. Uh and then the other ones that I've seen are are kind of the um uh what are they called? Like the Bolus nets where it's just like a projectile net that that's, you know, you fire this thing off and it it tangles it up to to bring it down. I guess, uh is there any sort of preferred approach or because there has to be some recognition. That that, you know, just getting people to work within the rules and and, you know, be a good citizen as far as a an operator is is not going to apply to everyone. There's always going to be a couple of people that are that are not abiding to good practices and and um using them safely or or in the appropriate areas. You guys have a sense of what the best way to to to provide some some backstop on that is? It's got to be user education. And I think, you know, as much as the media is sensationalizing drones hitting airplanes, which has turned out to be more often than not plastic bags aloft in the airspace, not actually drones. It is at least informing the uh uh the populace that, hey, you're not supposed to fly drones inappropriately. Uh you're not supposed to be endangering other people by using your drones. Active defense perspective. Uh the jamming of drones, you know, contradicts other laws in terms of uh you know, industry Canada mandates. You cannot be jamming uh frequencies. So, having some of the technologies that are out there that essentially jam uh either GPS or the control signal to force that drone to land. Uh in practice, you know, works. But you're opening up a big can of worms with with now interfering with not just that drone, but anyone else using that uh radio spectrum. The net is a good one as long as it can get up to where the drone is. It is you know, it's always going to be a reaction to people doing dumb things. And, you know, we've had cars for well over a century now. And people continue to do dumb things with cars. And we're not going to ban cars, we're not going to put a remote kill switch in the car. We just have to punish the people that offend and keep the public aware of the do's and don'ts of driving. The analogy to cars, I think, is a good one. You know, what if you had to get a drone operator license? Wouldn't that make sense? I'm all for having some sort of uh educational process to fly them. Uh you know, it's very similar to a boating license. It's just the basics, right? Like, the problem is is that people go into Best Buy with a thousand dollars in their pocket. Walk out with something that takes almost all skill away from flying the drone. And, you know, I'm part of a couple different community groups in Vancouver. Uh one is for literally the beginners of of of drone flying. And this person literally picked up uh a DJI Phantom from Best Buy, brought it out to the field. Put the battery in, put it up in the air and then it just took off. And he lost it, it like just flew. Um across the Fraser River and disappeared. And he's like, what the hell? And, you know, I said like, did you read the manual? Did you upgrade the firmware? Uh, you know, these are little flying computers and we all know that computers need to be updated fairly frequently. And he was very disappointed that he lost his thousand plus dollar toy, but, you know, it's a it's a it's totally a you didn't read the manual. If he if he had read the manual and I know the exact problem is that the GPS hadn't locked in before he took off. So that when it did lock in, it said, I need to go home, which was Shenzhen, China. It had no idea where it was. Yeah. So it flew out into the ocean, right? Yeah, exactly. So that that touches on sort of another topic that I wanted to hit on here. And this this relates kind of, I guess, to all of these aspects, the safety issue, the operator issue is sort of the the integration of the artificial intelligence. Into these systems because as you say, they are flying computers. They're just computers with, you know, a camera, some sensing devices, some radio gear and some and some rotors on it. What does that look like from an AI perspective, does that sort of eliminate the the user operation? And will these become more and more autonomous in sort of all aspects? What what's your view on on the development of AI integration? Well, the first platform that I built out in 2012 was um based off of Arduino. And it was a a controller board about the size of a credit card that you plugged in a GPS, a magnetometer, which is essentially a compass. Uh it had uh a barometer on it, uh accelerometer, uh essentially all the fancy things that we have in our smartphones today. On this little credit card size chip. And that provided this copter with an ability to fly quite autonomously. Not with collision avoidance, mind you, that's coming. But it knew as long as you understood to make sure the GPS had a lock before you armed the copter and took off. It would know how to come back. Albeit, if there was a tree or building in the way, it would meet a untimely death. Um, Now, fast forward to to the the racing space. We've actually stripped all that off. A from a weight perspective as well as from a computer processing perspective. When we fly, we're pushing the drone past its performance envelope. As defined by the flight controller. Because, you know, we need to make a turn that, yeah, you know what, if we continue that turn for more than half a second, we'll lose altitude and crash. But we need to make that turn and we can do so and then recover lift and and continue on our our our race. Whereas the flight controller has a a very strict limit of I'm not going to go on an angle that's I'm going to lose lift and fall. And that's good for pilots that want that stability and and don't necessarily uh have the piloting skills. But for racing, it's bad, so we've actually stripped out all that technology. However, for uh for photography and industrial purposes, having that accuracy. And that capability to fly a straight line for kilometers at a time is very important. And those capabilities are are exist and are being improved uh every day. Right. So you mentioned collision avoidance. This is um one of the aspects that I did want to touch on as well. Both of us being from Vancouver, there's a local company called Iris Automation that has gotten a lot of press. In the tech space right now for some VC funding around their software platform for kind of exactly this. That it has the intelligence to be aware of aircrafts around it, to be able to avoid trees and buildings and uh other drones as well. So that that I think is an important development. You've you kept track on the development of that those types of collision avoidance systems and other sort of those AI processes that will be necessary. Yeah, I've seen many projects uh being developed by universities. And on showing the capabilities of it. Um I would still say it's still in its infancy, but in order for the full commercialization and industrialization of of of autonomous drones. This technology has to be further developed. And it is, we're seeing it in the Tesla car, we're seeing it with Iris and various other uh university projects. That the technology is almost there. And once that technology is sound and, you know, the different regulatory bodies such as the FAA or Transport Canada are comfortable with it. We're going to see the the rules loosen up with autonomy. But as of right now, there is no uh besides obviously special cases, you're not allowed to have an autonomous drone flying. Uh both from a recreational perspective as well as a commercial perspective. And yeah, and I think that makes sense. Drones certainly got a lot of attention last year when uh or I guess the year before that. Amazon started doing a lot of talk about their delivery platform utilizing drones. And at first it kind of looked like, oh, yeah, yeah, that, you know, as if that's going to happen anytime soon. And then they started doing actual test runs in Canada. And then, you know, other companies and USPS has even suggested that they're testing this technology. And I think, you know, my perspective would be that you're exactly right that just waiting for that autonomy, that portion to be to be uh really integrated well and tested. Uh before that that becomes applicable. But, you know, the the the integration of that will be really, really key before, you know, we can just let these things out of the hanger. And and fly out, do their thing and come back without any type of user input. Absolutely. And, you know, these computers do fail. When I have flown autonomously, I've had numerous failures. Where it decides it doesn't know where I am, uh or where home is. And starts taking off. And, you know, I've actually moved away from using a lot of the cool autonomous features. Because I just don't trust them all that well. Maybe that's because it's open source software, maybe it's because I built it and I didn't build it perfectly. But I've definitely had disappointing results from using this. So I think it's still in its infancy. Now, looking at some of the commercial platforms. Uh, you know, I harp on DJI because of the Phantom because it lowers the uh the bar of entry so low. That people that shouldn't be flying a flying camera around are. However, their industrial platforms are very hard to compete with from other uh vendors. Uh and they are integrating some collision avoidance in there. Now, whether that's using um some of it's using uh ultrasonic uh essentially sonar. Some are using uh cameras uh and others are using lidar. But it's still uh in its infancy. I I wouldn't I wouldn't trust it and I don't think neither regulatory body is saying, okay, well, DJI's locked this in, now we can allow autonomy. Just because it's there's just too many variables in our world to allow for a a sensor right now just to be able to say, yes, that's a tree, I'm going to avoid it. It's going to avoid it perhaps into another vehicle. Yeah, this is um a very complex problem in in sort of that three-dimensional space. That car, you know, we're we're pretty close to having, you know, autonomous cars. I think that'll certainly happen in the next probably three years if uh if not, you know, maybe a little longer for regulatory approval anyway. But, you know, that's a that's a confined space. You know, you've got the lines, you've got uh, you know, the pavement, it kind of goes in one direction or the other. It's two-dimensional. Yeah, it is really limited. But, you know, you got up, down, left, right, lots of other stuff, birds, you know, a lot of unpredictable things that are happening in the air that aren't happening on the road. So it is a much more complex problem, right? Uh yeah, absolutely. And and again, both from a technology perspective as well as from a public perception. You know, I don't think there's a lot of people that are comfortable thinking that the sky could be congested one day with the little delivery drones going from building to building. And when that fails, what does that look like? Is that going into buildings? Are they colliding in mid-air and then crashing to the ground? There's some serious concerns, uh, you know, and, you know, the rule of thumb is. Is gravity always wins. What goes up must come down and if it's carrying, you know, a five pound package. It's uh where that lands is going to be pretty important. Yeah. Like the application of of parcel delivery on paper is a great concept. And there will be some uh very useful applications, but I don't see it as supplier to home delivery. At least not for several years, mainly because of, you know, there's a technology limitation as well. That these drones have a a very short lifespan, even the most most efficiently built ones. Only last about 10 to 20 minutes in the air. With very expensive batteries that take an hour or so to charge. So like it's not like we're going to be seeing the Jetsons anytime soon of zipping back and forth between buildings all day. Really, I didn't understand that the the the flight times were so low. That's that's uh that's a shock to me. If we're looking at multi-rotor. They're having to invent their own lift. The the whole time, at least with a plane, like with a fixed wing. It the wings are giving itself lift and the longevity is much much better. Um but actually the uh inventor of helicopters, Sorsky, I think, he actually was uh asked by an interviewer, um I I think back in the 50s or 60s. Like, when will helicopters be as efficient as planes? He says, never. They'll never be as efficient as planes, but they'll also be able to land places that planes will never be able to land. So, there's definitely um when we're looking at all these different applications, like maybe multi-rotor isn't the best option. If you're needing to drop a a medical supply kit to a stranded hiker, well, you know what, a fixed plane can circle. Find where it needs to go and then and then drop its target. It doesn't necessarily need to do a full landing. And that's something to consider when we're looking at these industrial applications. If we're looking at, you know, surveying for agriculture, pipelines, uh etcetera, maybe if a multi-rotor is not the best option. Because of a longevity. Uh if you if you need to fly down a pipeline and do some sort of inspection, you're going to get a lot better range with a fixed wing um than a multi-rotor. Yeah, that's a great application as well. Like uh because they're so nimble and they're so small, you know, you can move along a fairly tight corridor and, you know, in the forest and stuff like that. That it could actually inspect those pipes rather than, you know, sending someone down these long beaten roads. And having to inspect these by foot. Yeah, like right now, they do it by foot and they do it by traditional helicopter. Which is incredibly expensive. So, if they can automate that this and fly it autonomously and have the appropriate sensors on there. It's going to be a huge cost savings and actually can improve safety and reliability of these uh pipelines. Because we can have daily inspections, for example. Well, the future is bright for for drones and and the development of this space. Then for sure, right? Everyone needs to be a little cautious and understand where we're going. Um but it the reality is is that we're not going to see a a decline in the application of autonomous robots, both drones in the air, in on the land and in the sea. Uh it's just a matter of of making sure that they improve our society and not to make it more chaotic. Right. Well, this has been really insightful. I appreciate your time, Alex. Uh if people are interested in knowing more about the racing league, uh where would they be able to look that up and get in contact? I run the Vancouver chapter, uh and on Twitter. It's IO drones or Internet of Drones. Uh and there's several racing leagues across Canada and the United States. Um but definitely YouTube is the best option to see what drone racing is all about and you can look up uh IDRA or DRL. They both publish uh videos of their races online. Awesome. Appreciate your time, Alex. Have a good one. Thank you.